Why are Republicans so prone to putting their foot in their mouth... And then shooting themselves in the foot? He was practically a shoo-in.
In Newt’s case it was probably ego. He had a front row seat to Perry’s disastrous tilt w the ‘you have no heart’/illegal aliens meltdown; he saw exactly how it played out. But you can almost hear him thinking, ‘I’m smarter than Rick. I can finesse this issue, and turn it into a plus’.
Iow, some people’s faith in their own superiority knows no bounds. Newt is a classic narcissist. No one w a normal ego would, for example, cite as a partial explanation for common, ugly infidelity their ‘passion for the country’. An ordinary human says, ‘I yielded to desire for a woman who was not my wife. I.e.: I did wrong.’.
Newt, by contrast, invokes patriotism to explain infidelity. That right there is narcissism, I don’t care who you are.